Getting a few things for free
One tool working for you should be a "digital reward card". Much like a store card for your favourite supermarket the digital reward scheme allows you to collect points and these points can be converted into goodies. The leading scheme is called iPoints.
Currently they have a number of offers going on including a free Twice the Spice Voucher just for signing up (which is free). Once you have your free membership you will, of course, be able to get more from your online shopping but you will also be able to get iPoints in other (free) ways too.
For example you can currently get iPoints for using certain search engines, grabbing free accounts, applying for quotes and taking advantage of other offers. This should soon add up to a whole host of free stuff for you cutting the cost of living.
You can scoop 200 points just for joining - which is what I did...
On top of the free 200 points for joining you can get up to 300 additional points when you refer your friends.
There are plenty of big names backing up iPoints include Tesco, Littlewoods, Comet, The Body Shop, USwitch, Post Office Insurance, Toys R Us, More Than, HSBC and hundreds of others.
Taking Tesco for a moment with all they have to offer it means that you could be scoring reward points for DVD Rentals, shopping, Mobile Topups, Wines, books, Electrical and near enough everything else. I chose Tesco for the example purely because I often use Tesco Online for shopping sometimes.
(I buy locally when I can but when I'm busy getting it all delivered is a godsend).
I currently have over a thousand iPoints in my account and am saving towards a PSP which is the one geeky item that I can not justify spending money on. I recon that if you started now you could have enough to lower the cost of Christmas... oh is it to early to write that word?
As a side note I understand that you can Win £1,000 worth of Argos Vouchers on ipoints which is pretty cool although I've not noticed how or if this is still running.


